forms of civility and publicness in pre-british india 85

2FORMS OF CIVILITY AND PUBLICNESS IN

PRE-BRITISH INDIA

Farhat Hasan

The social history of precolonial India is still in its infancy. Itis indeed true that aspects of social life have been covered byhistorians, but the general tendency has been to see them as areflection of economic conditions. Historians who reject thisinsular base-superstructure relationship, nonetheless, still insistin studying the social history of the period within a de-contexualised and disjunctive framework, assigning, for ex-ample, separate and bounded treatment to such themes as'religious beliefs', 'popular festivals and rituals', 'art and litera-ture', 'gender relations', etc. What is missing in both perspec-tives is an appreciation of the need to develop an integrativeapproach to social history, with social communication servingas the unifying medium. After all, the collective experience ofpeople, in its multifarious manifestations, emerges from ashared, if contested, discursive field. Since the work on the socialhistory of the medieval period has evaded the problem of inter-subjective communication as a constituent element of sociallife, we know very little about the nature of social and politicalnorms, and the processes through they were instituted andmaintained, constituted and undermined. We are equally igno-rant about the complex mechanisms through which discursivesites, communities and identities were established and destroyed,and their significance in the overall organisation of socio-economic life.

Owing to the dearth of studies, we do not have a conceptualframework with which to analyse these problems either. Canthe models and theories that seek to encapsulate the experienceof inter-subjective communication in the modern period be ofany help here? In answering this problem, I would like to beginwith an astute observation made by a well-known historian ofmedieval Europe, Kathleen Biddick. Commenting on EdwardSaid's Orientalism,1 Biddick says that the modern Western worldhas fabricated its self-identity not only through the construc-tion of bounded, spatial compartments, those of the 'East' ('theOriental') and the 'West' ('the Occidental'), but also througha temporal disjunction between the 'Modern' and the 'Medieval'periods of history. Orientalism eloquently describes the discur-sive practices through which Europe essentialised and hierarchisedthe 'East' as its hostile, if inferior, 'other'. However, like mostother contemporary works concerned with the social andideological dimensions of modernity, it shares with theOrientalist writings it attacks a concept of temporality whichwas crucially equal to the fabrication of the identity of themodern West. In this concept, the medieval world is memorialisedand rigidly periodised; emplotted as the 'adolescent' stage ofmodernity, it becomes its 'other' in time. The continuities andinterconnections between the medieval and the modern periodsare conveniently overlooked, and medieval historians are pushedinto a condition of 'disciplinary exile'. Modern concepts andcategories of social analyses are treated as irrelevant for theunderstanding of the medieval period. Similarly, knowledge ofthe medieval world becomes useless for the better cognition of

1 Ever since its publication more than 20 years ago, Orientalism continues tobe discussed and debated among social scientists of all disciplines. Recently, TheAmerican Historical Review invited scholars from a cross-cultural background tocomment on the impact of the book on the social sciences, devoting a wholesection of one of its issues to their contributions (Vol. 105, No. 4 [October 2000]).Biddick was one among those who were invited by the Review. For the debateon Said's theory of the cultural politics of representation, also see Gyan Prakash,'Orientalism Now', History and Theory, 34 (1997), pp. 119-212; and Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics {New York, 1997),pp. 34-73.

padmaCivil society, public sphere, and citizenship : dialogues and perceptions/ edited by Rajeev Bhargava; Helmut Reifeld; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005. (84-105 p.)

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the modern period. Both periods, in this concept of time, standintellectually separate and isolated from each other. As Biddickputs it:

Said and Anderson2 share a concept of temporality as a spatialbinary of supersession: one epoch replaces another. Super-session guarantees the tenaciously enduring and normativedivision of historical temporalities into periods: Classical,Medieval, Early Modern, Modern, Postmodern.... It is pre-cisely this enduring way of organizing historical thought thatOrientalism needed to question and failed to. Said thus rendersOrientalism orientalised, caught within its own historiality.3

In the Indian case, the disjunction between the medieval andmodern periods is much more rigid, because modernity here istreated as analogous to colonialism. British imperialism is takento be the central catalyst of change, and the preceding periodbecomes one of stasis, enduring constancy and absence ofhistory. 'The Hindus,' said Hegel, 'have no history, no growthexpanding into a veritable political condition.'4 The separationbetween the two periods is further reinforced by thecharacterisation of the eighteenth century as a dark age of Indianhistory. Within this view, of course, it can then be argued thatenlightenment dawned in India only with the coming of colo-nialism/modernity.

2 Biddkk is here referring to Benedict Anderson's influential work on theemergence of nationalism and national communities, Imagined Communities:Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991).3 Kathleen Biddick, 'Coming Out of Exile: Dante on the Orient(alism) Express',The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 4 (October 2000), pp. 1234-49. Thisparticular statement is on p. 1236.4 G.W. Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York, 1956),p. 163. Karl Marx largely shared Hegel's ideas about a stagnant precolonial India,but located the reasons for stagnation not in religious beliefs, as had been doneby Hegel, but in the organisation of the village community. (For details, seeIrfan Habib, Marx's Perception of India, The Marxist, Vol. 1, No. 1 Quly-September 1983); subsequently reprinted in Irfan Habib, Essays in Indian History:Towards a Marxist Perception (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 14-58.

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Several historians are now repudiating this rigid periodisationof Indian history.3 Their studies reveal intricate layers of inter-connections and continuities between the medieval/precolonialand modern/colonial periods, which modern historiographyhas actively served to smother in the anxiety to demarcate thetemporal landscape within insular periods. This obviouslyraises the question whether we can apply, with suitable modi-fication of course, modern conceptual and cognitive categoriesof social analysis to the medieval period, with profit. Can we,to take something that is directly concerned with the theme ofthis paper, use Habermas' insights on the emergence of bour-geois public sphere for a better understanding of the relationshipbetween culture and power, and the processes of intersubjectivecommunication and identity-formation in medieval India? Canwe also refer to the existence of a civil society in that period?

Historians of medieval Europe are now arguing that a kindof civil society did exist in medieval Europe.6 Similarly, in animportant article, Said Amir Arjomand describes civil societyas one of the three organisational loci of social agency in themedieval Islamic world, the other two being the patrimonialstate and the patrician household.7 Skeptics might argue, notwithout some justification, that to look for civil society in aperiod devoid of individualism and citizenship amounts to ananachronistic exercise, spurious and futile. However, if civilsociety is understood, as in the Hegelian framework, to be asphere of social relations between the individual and the statewhose autonomy is guaranteed by law and the presence ofcorporate institutions, then we can certainly argue that it was

5 See, e.g., C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society inthe Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1984); idem, Empire andInformation:Intelligence CatheringandSocial Communication in India, 1780-1870(New Delhi, 1999); P.J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead. Eastern India,1740-1828 (Cambridge, 1987).6 See, e.g., A. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (Princeton, 1992).' Said Amir Arjomand, The Law, Agency, and Policy in Medieval IslamicSociety: Development of the Institutions of Learning from the Tenth to theFifteenth Century, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 2(April 1999), pp. 262-93.

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an important locus of social agency m medieval India as well.In fact, Said Arjomand sees in the civil societies of medievalIslamic societies a serious failing, that of the absence of corpo-rations. The civil society in medieval India was better developedin this respect, for the existence of corporate institutions is welldocumented in several modern works.8

Civil society should not be seen in passive, structural terms,for it was continually modified and altered by intersubjectivecommunication among social agents. Public communicationindeed helped shape, in a crucial way, the form of its self-constitution. It was actually its ability to generate open-endedcommunication and patterns of normative integration thatdistinguished civil from political society. But then what werethe modes of public communication in pre-British India? Howwere the normative claims raised and redeemed in civil society?What were the cognitive and normative principles that deter-mined intersubjective communication? In grappling for ananswer to these problems, perhaps one should begin by askingwhether a public sphere can be said to have existed in thatperiod.

Habermas, by far the leading theorist of the public sphere,assigns to each period of European history a distinct form ofpublicity:

(i) 'The Hellenic public sphere'9 (in the ancient period);(ii) 'The publicity of representation' or 'the representative

publicness'10 (in the medieval period);(m) 'The bourgeois public sphere' or the 'liberal public

sphere'11 (in the modern period, particularly after 1750s).

forms of civility and publicness in pre-british india 89

Historians generally ascribe to precolonial India a form ofpublicity that was akin to the one found in the European MiddleAges'the representative publicness'. In the representative pub-licness, as Habermas clarifies, the public sphere was non-existent,and the public domain was appropriated by the ruling powersfor the display of their status, dignity and authority: 'Thispublicness (or publicity) of representation was not constituted as asocial realm, that is, as a public sphere: rather, it was somethinglike a status attribute, if the term may be permitted.'12

Now, as several historians have shown, Habermas exaggeratesthe contrast between 'the publicity of representation' and 'thepublic sphere' which, he reckons, emerged in the late eighteenthcentury as a crucial component of the Enlightenment period.In fact, the public sphere as a space for publicity in which the'public' discussed, debated and judged social and political norms,was already in existence in Europe in the sixteenth century.13

I shall be arguing in this paper that the presence of the publicsphere in quite a similar form is discernible in precolonial Indiaas well. It would certainly be more appropriate to characterisethe publicity in precolonial period as the public sphere ratherthan as 'the representative publicness'.

It is, of course, true that the political powers representedtheir authority before the people by elaborate rituals, eti-quette and ostentatious display in public places. It has, forexample, been shown by Nicholas Dirks in his study of aTamil kingdom in the pre-British period that ritual and osten-tation were a crucial element of sovereignty; shifts in ritual,as his study reveals, reflected changes in the political configu-ration.14 Similarly, in an interesting paper, John F. Richards

g See C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars; Farhat Hasan, 'State and LocalPower Relations in the Towns of Gujarat: Surat and Cambay, c. 1572-1740',PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1997.9 Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiryinto a Category of Bourgeois Society, tr. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Massachu-setts, 1998 [reprint]), pp. 3-4.10 Ibid., pp. 5-14.11 Ibid., pp. 14-26.

12 Ibid., p. 7.13 Sarah Hanley, Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, CivilRights and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and Government, 1500-1800.The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 1 (February 1997), pp. 27-52; andMichele Fogel, Les ceremonies d'information dans la France du XVk and XVIIIcsiecle (Paris, 1989).14 Nicholas B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom(Cambridge, 1987).

90 farhat hasanforms of civility and publicness in pre-british india 91

has shown that courtly rituals were a constitutive element ofMughal sovereignty.15

However, the public space was not exclusively controlled bythe ruling powers to unilaterally represent political authoritybefore the subject population. The common people, too,created social identities and participated in political debate andopinion-formation in the media of the non-discursive forms ofcommunication. If the power-holders employed rituals to re-inscribe domination, the subordinate social groups used themto resist it, to constrain power to the point of 'minimumdisadvantage'.16 It is for this reason that popular festivals werea source of considerable anxiety for the state and the rulingclasses. In some cases, the people came in direct conflict withthe elites, as had happened in 1714-15 in Ahmedabad on theoccasion of Holi.17 In other instances, the state had to passorders imposing tighter controls over the celebrations, asAurangzeb did in 1665 by ordering his officials to ensure thatthe 'Hindus' did not use obscene and foul language {guftar-ifuhasb) during festivals.18 Of course, it was because subjectsindulged in political satire and poked fun at elite values duringfestivals that their language on these occasions appeared 'ob-scene' to the state and the ruling classes.

Congregational prayers among religious communities wereanother important source of ritual communication in thepublic arena. The Friday prayers among Muslims, for example,had a useful role to play in promoting socialisation, but thesewere equally political acts where claims to power were raised,debated and contested. The sermons {khutba) that were readbefore prayers served as an instrument of political legitimation

15 J.F. Richards, 'The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar andJahangir', in J.F. Richards (ed.), Kingship and Aulbority in South Asia (Delhi,1998), pp. 285-326.16 The expression is borrowed from EJ. Hobsbawm, Peasants and Politics,Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1973), pp. 3-22.17 Ali Muhammad Khan, Mir'at-i Ahmadi, ed. Saiyad Nawab Ali (Baroda, 1927-28), I, pp. 405-407.18 Ibid., pp. 261-62.

for the state. The common people did occasionally prohibittheir recitation to convey their refusal to extend legitimacy tothe state, in protest against what they considered to be unjustand oppressive acts of its officials. In 1726, the Muslims in Suratprohibited the recitation of the khutba and the congregationalFriday prayer as a mark of protest against the kotwal who hadarrested a woman and confiscated her money on allegedlytrumped up charges.19 In 1725, the Muslims of Delhi preventedthe imam of the main mosque, the jami' masjid, from reciting thekhutba in protest against the decision of the mufti and the qazinot to entertain the appeal of a converted Hindu that, followinghis conversion, his daughter had involuntarily also become aMuslim.20 Instances such as these injured sovereignty, and forthis reason invited prompt state action; in the case of the latter,the imperial court had to transfer both the qazi and the muftifrom Delhi.21 But the important point here is that these wereacts of ritualistic communication. If the state conveyed itsauthority in civil society through khutba, civil society commu-nicated its conditions of acceptance of that authority by pre-venting its recitation when these conditions failed. Ritualcommunication here was seeking to redress an infringement ofthe shared norms of governance and rule-making. Clearly then,the space for publicity was not confined to the rulers alone, butincluded the participation of the ruled as well. It involved formsof verbal and ritual communication, through which politicalauthority was both legitimated and undermined, re-inscribedand subverted.

Social communication was not without restrictions, and thenormative system was defended and interpreted as much throughthe demonstration of power and strength as by the force ofmoral, rational argument. And quite in contrast to the bour-geois public sphere, at least in its ideal condition, the state andthe ruling elites could win arguments, however weak andunconvincing, through the employment of material resources.

19 I t imad Ali K h a n , Mi'rat-ul Haqaiq, f. 460(a).20 C i t e d in S.A. A. Rizvi , Shah Wali-allah and His Times (Canber ra , 1980), p . 200.21 Ibid.

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When Aurangzeb ascended the throne after deposing and impris-oning his father Shahjahan in 1658, 'the scholars and intellec-tuals of Islam' ['uiema wa fttzala), including the chief qazi (qazi-ulquzzat), argued that in accordance with the rules of the shari'a,the kbutba could not be read in the name of the new emperorsince his father was still alive. This obviously created a crisis oflegitimacy for Aurangzeb, who then hired a scholar, AbdulWahab, to bail him out, assuring him a suitable reward for hisservices. Wahab then presented a detailed case in favour ofAurangzeb, saying that since Shahjahan had grown old andsenile, it was not only lawful (jai'z), but also obligatory (nafiz)to accept his son as the new sovereign.22

Habermas has referred to the disruption of the bourgeoispublic sphere following its appropriation by the state in themedia of money and power. The Mughal state could scarcelybe expected to do that, but it was certainly not averse to useboth money and power to secure its legitimacy in civil society.The communicatively achieved norms did not, after all, existin isolation from the political and social arrangements insociety. However, despite these external pressures, there stillprevailed certain cognitive and universalisable principles throughwhich subjects raised and redeemed validity claims arising inintersubjective communication. An indication of what theseclaims were is provided to us by a source that describes howAbdul Wahab presented his motivated defence of Aurangzeb.In trying to justify his accession, Ali Muhammad Khaninforms us, Wahab had to rely on (a) 'legal conventions' (masa'il-ifiqhi) (b) 'rational arguments' (dala'il-i 'aqli), and (c) 'demonstra-tive traditions' (barahin-i naqli)P These, then, were the formalelements of a normative discourselaw {or authority), rational-ity (or commonsense wisdom) and tradition (or sanctity).

This takes us to another important aspect of social commu-nication in pre-British India, and that is the interpenetration ofritual, oral and written media of communication. The Friday

11 Ah Muhammad Khan, Mir'ati Abmadi, I, p. 248.23 Ibid., I, p. 248.

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kbutba was, after all, a form of ritual and verbal communication,but in presenting his case for the inclusion of his patron's namein the kbutba, Wahab was relying on the written medium withits own specific cognitive and linguistic competencies. Thewritten media reinforced oral and ritual culture, providing aframework for the assimilation of shifts in political spaces, socialhierarchies and collective identities. Similarly, textual practicesfound in rituals an important medium for the dissemination ofinformation, mutual knowledge and critical debate. C.A. Baylyhas rightly pointed out that despite low literacy, India was a'literacy-aware society' in which 'the elites and populace bothused written media in complex and creative ways to reinforceoral culture and debate'.24 In the Mughal and post-Mughalperiods of Indian history, the educated intelligentsia, the reli-gious elites and the state shared information and ideas over vastdistances through flexible and diffuse networks of communica-tion.25 To take one example, Shah Kalimullah (1650-1729),who is often credited with the revival of the Chishtia mysticalorder (silsilab) in Delhi, had his khalifas and disciples all overIndia, including the Deccan and the South. He maintainedconstant surveillance over their activities through a regularexchange of letters, advising them on how to advance theinterests of the order,26 censuring them for moral lapses,27

settling conflicts among his disciples28 and even checking outtheir itinerancy.29 The Mughals and the rulers of the successorstates in the eighteenth century likewise relied on well-definedtextual practices to consolidate their authority, as is evidentfrom the voluminous extant records ranging from the papers of

24 C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 180.2:1 Ibid., see, in particular, Chapters 1 and 5.2G The Shah advised one of his disciples not to hesitate from visiiing the housesof nobles and enrolling them as disciples (Shah Kalimullah, Makcubat-i Kalimi(Letters of Shah Kalimullah), compiled by Maulavi Muhammad Kalimi {Delhi,1883), I, p. 28.27 Ibid. , I, p . 18.28 Ibid., I, p. 43.29 Ibid., I, pp. 26, 29, 46, 48, 50, 53, 88 and 116.

94 farhat hasan forms of civility and publicness in pre-british india 95

the villagepatwarp0 to orders emanating from the imperial court.In fact, the connection between literary practices and statepower was far more complicated. Muzaffar Alam has shown theintricate processes through which the Mughal state and theruling classes tried to control the sites of textual productionwith a view to re-inscribe the existing political structure.31

Similarly, Veena Naregal's study reveals that control over thelinguistic economy constituted an important strategy of politi-cal legitimation in the Maratha political system.32

It is thus quite incorrect to see in precolonial India thepresence of the Habermasean 'publicity of representation'.What we see, instead, is an enduring, if persistently changing,normative system instituted in intersubjective communication.There were well-defined ethical and cognitive principles throughwhich normative claims could be raised, redeemed or rejected.Even so, those who enjoyed power and money were not averseto using them to push their needs-interpretation within thenormative system. But the common people also knew ofmethods and techniques of defending their interests, based onthe manipulation of the system and the mobilisation of publicopinion. The sites of textuality were not only diffused but werealso deeply entwined with the communicative processes throughwhich social and political norms were instituted and main-tained. It is for this reason that the state and the local elites andpower-holders jostled with each other for their control. Surely,one could justifiably characterise such a public domain as thepublic sphere, though it was certainly not the bourgeois or theliberal public sphere described by Habermas.

}: Abu'l Fazl describes the patwari as 'an accountant on behalf of the peasants.He records the expenditure and income; and there Is no village without him'(Abu'l Fazl, A 'in-iAkbari, ed. Henry Ferdinand Blochmann [Calcutta, 1867-77]),I, p. 300.11 Muzaffar Alam, 'The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Polities', ModernAsian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1998), pp. 317-49.32 Veena Naregal, 'Language and Power in Pre-colonial Western India: Textualhierarchies, literate audiences and colonial philology', Indian Economic andSocial History Review, Vol. 37, No. 3 (July-September 2000), pp. 259-94.

Our argument concerning the existence of the public spherein precolonial India rests on the evidence of a vibrant space forpublicity, in which normative claims were raised and redeemedin intersubjective communication. And, as in Western Europe(particularly France) during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, it included not only the professional classes and men ofletters, but also 'the people in the streets' and women,33 Itsgenesis apparently lay in the ambiguities in the legal-sacralsystem (generally known to the contemporaries as sbari'a ordharmd), which facilitated the emergence of a space in which anaccommodation among conflicting needs-interpretation couldtake place. Women, as my research on western India revealed,played an important role in this space, continually modifyingthe system by manipulating its ambiguities in their favour.34

The ideological conflicts between the power-holders and thesubordinate social groups occurred within a shared normativesystem, and not as contests between alternate sets of norms andvalues. The public sphere in precolonial India was thus a domainof contestation among social actors; it was equally a space inwhich both the elites and the common people participatedwithin an agreed-upon framework of norms and values.

It would consequently be quite incorrect to see such a publicsphere as resembling the 'Hellenic public sphere' in the city-states of ancient Greece,35 for the simple reason that it was not,like the Hellenic public sphere, an exclusive elite space. C.A.Bayly has argued that it resembled 'the Christian-Greek ecumene',restricted to 'the groupings of philosophers, urban notables andofficials'.36 It is indeed true that this was not an egalitarianpublic sphere which transcended social distinctions of status andwealth; the socially inferior groups were there in it too, con-tinually modifying the framework of norms and values byemploying socially acceptable techniques of communicationand debate. The critical public sphere was actually quite

yi Sarah Hanley, 'Social Sites'.34 Farhat Hasan, 'State and Local Power Relations', Chapter IV.3:1 Jurgen Habermas, Structural Transformation, pp. 3-4.u C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 182.

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incomplete without the dynamic, if unequal, participation ofthe subordinate classes. In treating it as an inter-elite form ofsocialisation, we ignore the role of subaltern agency in itsarticulation and the complicated processes through which thevictims of power participated, expressed and reshaped the formand content of social and political debate.

The subordinate social groups preferred to participate withinspaces that were open and indeterminate, but the public spherethat emerged from their participation was far more pluralisticthan the sites of rational deliberation celebrated by Habermas.Contemporary sources provide ample evidence of the ubiquityof a public space constructed around such popular texts asposters, handwritten epistles, placards, etc. This was the spacein which the common people interacted with the elites todevelop a shared framework of norms and values, and tomobilise public opinion against its infringement and violation.In one such placard, found in a mid-seventeenth century col-lection of documents, a person alleges that the former governor(hakim) of Surat had constructed a mansion {kaveli) encroachinghis land.37 In another placard, a caretaker (mutawalli) of a mosquein Surat describes the dilapidated condition of his mosque, andmakes a public request for 'the rich and the influential residentsof Surat' to come forward and make donations for its mainte-nance.38 What we see in both these instances is a popularaffirmation of the normative system and an attempt to mobilisepublic opinion against the local officials and the elites violatingit. In the first case, the infringement concerned the norm thatrequired state authorities to respect private property. Thesecond placard was emphasising the responsibility of the elitesin the normative system towards charity and patronage of placesof worship.

For the common populace, participation in the public spherewas an ideological struggle, through which they penetrated thenormative system and manipulated it to suit their interests. Thenormative structure defined general interests, but in a manner

37 Bibliotheque Nationale, Suppl. Pers. 482, ff. 236(b)-237(a).38Ibid.,ff.215(b)-216(a).

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that obviously reinforced elite domination. Social norms trans-muted economic capital into symbolic capital, a process thathas been termed by James Scott as 'the euphemisation ofeconomic power'.39 However, for these norms to prevail andbe socially relevant, there had to be something in them for thesubordinate groups as well. It is this compulsionthe need totease out a framework of agreed-upon rules acceptable to boththe power-holders and the subjects of powerthat createdspaces in the normative environment that were appropriated bythe latter to defend their material and symbolic interests.

The public sphere emerged in the seventeenth century in thelegal-sacral site in which an active public mobilised 'publicopinion' over issues of moral and political concern. It is withinsuch public spaces as places of worship, the assemblies ofreligious divines and, increasingly in the eighteenth century, theopen bazaars and the streets that the normative system wasdiscussed and interpreted, defended and modified. The scholarsand divines would occasionally raise controversial issues in thesermons they delivered in the mosques. The common peopledid not always listen to these sermons in silence, but expressedtheir disapproval, if they found anything unacceptable, throughloud protestations, as happened once in the chief mosque atDelhi in the early eighteenth century.40 In another instance,when a preacher from Multan, Shaikh Abdullah raised certaincontroversial matters concerning the sbari'a in the Delhi mosque,Khwaja Muhammad Jafar, a sufi saint, reproached him forpreaching something that was contrary to the faith and chal-lenged him to a debate on the concerned issue either at his houseor in the assembly of learned men (fuzala).41 In the hospices(khanqahs) of the sufi saints and the monasteries of the bhaktipreachers, the disciples and the common people discussed

39 James S. Sco t t , Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance ( N e w H a v e n ,1985), pp. 305-14. Also see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, tr.Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977), p. 192.40 Khafi Khan, Muntkhab-ul Lubab, ed. Kabiruddin Ahmad and Ghulam Qadir(Calcutta, 1870), Vol. II (Part 2), pp. 759-60.41 Ibid., II (Part 2), pp. 758-59.

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normative texts and raised ethical and moral claims that some-times questioned the practices of even their own masters. In thelate seventeenth century, a disciple of Baba Palangposh (whodied in 1699), Baba Musafir, questioned the appropriateness ofreligious divines, including Palangposh himself, visiting thehouses of the wealthy and influential people.42 When BabaMusafir himself became the master (pir) and began to convenehis own assemblies, his disciples would occasionally correct himon his interpretations of the normative religious texts.43

The mosques and the khanqahs of course did not exclude thecommon people, but there were limits to their participation insocial communication at these places. They therefore preferredthe open streets and marketplaces to mobilise public opinionon issues that were of concern for them. In several importantmarkets, spaces were actually reserved for speeches by or/andfor the common people. When Dargah QuH Khan visited Delhiin 1737, he found in the chawk (marketplace) of Sadullah Khana corner reserved for public speeches.44

Arising from the legal-sacral field, the public sphere expandedinto the literary and the political realms. The presence of aliterary public instituting norms of cultivation, aesthetics andliterary expression in communication, becomes evident fromthe existence of a large number of works on contemporarypoets, known as tazkiras, which were written in the eighteenthcentury.45 The writers and poets were no longer interested inassessing each other's works within private and secluded spaces,but were increasingly placing their criticisms before the public,accepting it as the chief judge of literary merit. Khan Arzu, forexample, wrote a tract, Tambibul Ghafilin, in condemnation of

42 Baba Shah M a h m u d , Malfuzat-i Naqsbbandta, t ranslated b y Simon Digby underthe t i t le, Sufis and Soldiers in Aurangzeb's Reign (Delhi , 2001), p p . 6 0 - 6 1 .43 Ibid., pp. 179-80.44 Dargah Q u l i K h a n , Muraqqa-i Dihli, ed. Nurul Hasan Ansari (Delhi, 1982),p. 35.45 For a list of the important tazkiras that were written in the e igh teen th cen tu ry ,see C .A . Storey , Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey (London , 1972[reprint]), Vol . I, Part 2, pp. 781-923 .

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the poetic style of Shaikh Ali Hazin. Hazin defended his workbefore the public in a rejoinder entitled, Rajm-ul Shayatin, towhich Arzu responded by another tract called Ihqaq-ul Haqq.^Literary criticism had, in fact, found a new respectability associety began to reject literary works written not for the peoplebut for rulers and the nobility. As Faiz Dehlavi, a contemporarypoet, wrote:

I have never showered praises on anyone in my poemsbecause it is undignified. The poets in the past did so out ofnecessity, under orders of the rulers, or on their own, simplyto please them. I am free from such temptations. I have nomotive [in composing poems] except to be remembered aftermy death. Nobody, except God, deserves to be eulogized.47

The literary public sphere was, however, not an exclusiveinter-elite space for social communication. It could never closeitself off from the common people, and was continually modi-fied by their participation. In 1641, a petty merchant of ShnmalJama community wrote his autobiography, called 'Half a Tale'(Ardhakatbanaka),48 which presents its author as a merchant whocombined trade with literary pursuit; the autobiography men-tions several works written by its author, Banarsidas.49 He alsoheld poetic assemblies in his house, and his audience includeda sweets-vendor.50 In the mid-seventeenth century we comeacross a biography of a sufi saint belonging to the lowly telicaste,51 Pir Hassu. Hassu's disciples were drawn from a widespectrum of people, crosscuttmg ties of religion, caste and class.

46 C.A. Storey, Persian Literature, Vol. I, Par t 2, pp . 240-49. Fo r details aboutSirajuddin Khan Arzu, see Dargah Qul i Khan, Muraqqa-i Dibit, p . 68.47 Sadruddin Muhammad Khan Faiz, Diwan-i Faiz, edited by Saiyad MasudHasan Rizvi under the title, Faiz Dehlavi aur unka Kalam (Delhi, 1946),pp. 68-70.48 Banarsidas, Ardhakatbanaka, edited and translated by Mukund Lath under thetitle, Haifa Tale (Jaipur, 1981).49 Ibid., p. 90.50 Ibid., p. 49.31 The telis were a caste of oilmen, and were considered low and impure.

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He had among his disciples a sweeper, a petty trader and adomestic servant.52

From discussing and evaluating works of art and literature,people went on to discursively appropriate the political domainas well. The extent to which the public sphere in the world ofletters was enmeshed with the political public sphere is quiteevident from the emergence of a new literary genre in the earlyeighteenth century, known as asbobname, in which the poetsmade a succinct critique of the prevailing political and socialconditions, but in a literary form that relied on contemporarystandards of literary aesthetics. The writers of the period wereincreasingly raising issues of efficient administration and bettergovernance, criticising the Mughal rulers, nobility and officialsfor lacking imagination, initiative and willingness to improve theaffairs of the state.53 Thinkers like Shah Waliullah were offeringdetailed analyses of the prevailing social and political conditions,and were making pointed criticisms of state policies.54

The common people's influence over the public sphereincreased with the emergence of Hindustani (or Urdu) as thestandard language of communication and literary cultivation inthe eighteenth century. The discursive domain engaged by Urduwas divided into 'high' and 'low' realms, but subaltern resistance

52 Surat Singh, Tazkira-i Pir Hassu Teli (compiled in 1644-47). The only extantcopy of this work is available at the Centre of Advanced Study, Aligarh MuslimUniversity (Aligarh). For details about it, see M. Athar Ali, 'Sidelights intoIdeological and Religious Attitudes in the Punjab during the SeventeenthCentury' in Medieval IndiaA Miscellany, Vol. 2 (Bombay, 1972), pp. 187-94.33 Mir Taqi Mir wrote a poem, Masnavi-i kizb, condemning the Mughal officersfor being inefficient and dishonest. (Mir Taqi Mir, Kulliyat-i Mir, ed. Abdul BariAsi [Lucknow, 1941]), pp. 835-36). Sauda, another important poet of the eigh-teenth century, wrote a poem describing the breakdown of law and order inDelhi, and the corrupt activities of the kotwal (Muhammad Rafi Sauda, Kulliyat-i Sauda, ed. Abdul Bari Asi [Lucknow, 1932], I, pp. 378-81); Qaim Chandpuriwrote a poem against the qazi of Sambhal who had a proclivity for exactingbribes from hapless people (Qayamuddin Qaim Chandpuri, Kulliyat-i Qaim, ed.Iqtidar Hasan [Lahore, 1965], II, pp. 65-68).

-4 Shah Waliullah, Shah Waliullah ke Siyasi Maktubat [The Political Letters ofShah Waliullah], ed. K.A. Nizami (Delhi, 1969); also see Athar Abbas Rizvi, ShahWali-allah, pp. 287-316.

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on the margins that separated them was both incessant andintense, leading to a narrowing of the two realms and a corre-sponding expansion of the arena of public communication. InMir Abul Qasim's detailed study of Urdu poets, entitled Majmu 'a-i Naghz, we come across a poet who was a barber (bajjam) byprofession, and another who was an attendant of a shrine inDelhi.55 Interestingly, Qasim also mentions several Hindu pettymerchants actively participating in literary activities.56 Mir TaqiMir, a well-known poet of the eighteenth century, repeatedlybemoaned what he saw as the decline of Urdu poetry withpeople from humble backgrounds'the low-born' (ajlaf), 'thecloth merchants' (buzzaz) and 'the cotton-dressers' (nadafjtaking to Urdu poetry:

What do the low-born know about the subtleties of themind?What do the cloth merchants and the cotton-dressers knowabout poetry?37

In a similar vein, Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi bemoaned:

It was the vocation of men of noble descent to compose versesAlas! The art has been ruined by the low-born taking up this

* t

vocation.-58

Feminist critics of Habermas point out that the bourgeoispublic sphere excluded women, and that their exclusion wasstructurally related to the forms of modern publicity.59 It would

55 Mir Abul Qaim Qudratullah, Majmu'a-i Naghz, ed. Mahmud Sherani (Delhi,1973), I, pp. 197-99,230.56 Ibid., I, pp. 230, 259-60.57 Mir Taqi Mir, Kulliyat-i Mir, p. 825.58 Cited in Abul Lais Siddiqui, Mushafi Am Unka Kalam (Delhi, 1969), p. 176.In a similar vein, Sauda says: 'Even as the art of poetry is known everywherein the Universe; when it reaches the hands of the ignorant (nadan) it becomesimperfect.' (Muhammad Rafi Sauda, Kulliyat-i Sauda, Vol. I, p. 17.59 See, for example, the following articles in Johanna Meehan (ed.), FeministsRead Habermas (New York, 1995): Nancy Fraser, 'What's Critical about CriticalTheory', pp. 21-56; Jean L. Cohen, 'Critical Social Theory and Feminist

102 farhat hasan forms of civility and publicness in pre-british india 103

be historically incorrect to argue that the critical public spherein the precolonial period was gender-neutral, but its flexibilitydid allow women limited participation. Besides women fromaristocratic families,60 the contemporary tazkiras mention po-etesses from less respectable backgrounds as well: concubines,mistresses and dancing girls.61

The active involvement of subordinate social groups, includ-ing women, should not lead us into believing that the publicsphere of debate and opinion formation was unitary and egali-tarian. Several scholars point out that such a claim cannot bemade for the liberal, bourgeois public sphere either.62 Thesubordinate groups were able to influence it only throughideological struggles in which gains were piecemeal but definite,slow but continuous. One should not see the public sphere inthe precolonial period in uniform and homogenous terms, butrather as a pluralistic cultural space in which multiple andcontrastive publics intersected, emerged and collapsed all at thesame time. To take an example, musha'iras or poetry recitationassemblies63 were usually inter-elite affairs that were convenedin the houses of respectable and learned elites. Finding them-selves excluded from these musha'iras, the common peoplecreated alternative spacesin the bazaars, the fairs, the festivalsand the kothas of dancing girlsto express themselves in the

Critiques', pp. 57-90; and Joan B. Landes, 'The Public and the Private Sphere:A Feminist Reconsideration', pp. 91-116.b0 See Mir Abul Qasim, Majmu'a-i Nagbz, Vol. I, pp. 257-58; ibid., Vol. II, pp.145-46; Mir Hasan Dehlavi, Tazkira-i Shu 'ara-i Urdu, ed. Habibur Rahman KhanSherani (Aligarh, 1922), p. 93; andGhulam Hamadani Mushafi, Tazkira-i Hindi,ed. Akbar Haideri Kashmiri (Lucknow, 1980), pp. 316-18.61 Moti was a mistress of a noble, Mirza Ibrahim Beg, and became famous inLucknow owing to her melodious voice (Mushafi, Tazkira-i Hindi, pp. 317-18);Muhammadi Begum, another poetess of Awadh, was a prostitute (AmiruddinAhmad, Tazkira-i Musarrat Afza. The Urdu translation by Mujeeb Qureshi hasbeen consulted [Delhi, 1968], p. 240).62 C. C a l h o u n (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambr idge , Mass. , 1992).63 In a musba'tra t he poe t s usually sat in a semi-circle and a l ighted candle waspassed on from poet to poet, with the person holding the candle expected torecite his poem, after which he would pass it on to the poet sitting next to him.

domain of textuality and culture. Pir Khan 'Kamtarin' wouldwrite couplets on a piece of paper and sell them in the Ghuzribazaar of Delhi.64 Maqsud Saqqa's poetry was considered toooutrageous to be recited in the musha'iras, but his disciplesrecited it in crowded fairs and during the Holi festival.65 Thesewere clearly some of the ways through which the commonpeople manipulated their way into the literary public sphere,and while they succeeded in influencing it, they did not removefrom it notions of social difference and hierarchy.

One important change that did occur in the form of publicityas a result of the greater involvement of the common peoplein the public sphere was a rapid proliferation of sites ofdiscussion and debate. And, as most of these sites happened tobe 'secular' in nature, in the limited sense of having emergedfrom outside the religious domain, they seemed to have prompteda change in the relationship between textual norms and politicalpower. One such site, of which we have no evidence in the earlymedieval period, was the coffee house. Murshid Quli Khan,visiting Delhi in 1739-41, saw coffee houses [qabwa khand) inthe busy Chandni Chawk in Delhi, where people from diversesocial backgrounds listened to each other's poems and, as theydrank coffee, raised and redeemed social and political norms.66

People thronged to these coffee houses not so much for coffeeas for sociability, discussion and debate. In fact, some men theredid not even buy coffee from the bazaar, but chose to bring theirown home-made version, visiting the coffee house only to'enjoy the company of friends'.67 George Forster, who visitednorthern India in 1783, was quite impressed by the discussionsand the overall atmosphere of the coffee houses he saw in India:

-

64 Mir Abul Qasim, Majmua-i Naghz, II, pp . 143-44.65 Mushafi, Tazkira-i Hindi, p . 270.66 Dargah Qul i Khan, Muraqqa-i Delhi, p . 39.67 Anand Ram Mukhlis , Mir'at-ul Istilah (the microfilm of the manuscript avail-able at the Cent re of Advanced Study in His to ry , Aligarh has been consulted),ff. 176(b)-177(a). For the coffee houses in Faizabad, see Mir Hasan Dehlavi,Majmua'i Masnawiyat Mir Hasan Dehlavi, ed. Abdul Bari Asi (Lucknow, 1966),p . 1 5 1 .

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What harmony, what good humour, are often seen circulat-ing in a sweet meat shop, the coffee house of India! whereall subjects except that of the ladies, are treated with freedom:not so eloquently perhaps, nor with such refinement oflanguage, as among politicians of an European capital, yetwith equal fervour and strength of voice.68

And in markets where such coffee houses did not exist, therewere still vibrant, well-demarcated public spaces for discussion,debate and political participation. Baba Palangposh (who diedin 1699), a sufi saint of the naqshbandia order, saw one in amarket in the Deccan, and its vibrancy is succinctly commu-nicated to us by Baba Shah Mahmud, Palangposh's biographer,in the following words:

On the one side [of the bazaar] accomplished men of educa-tion and skilful poets conducted learned discourses ormusha'iras, so that the noise of their disputation would reachhis blessed ear. He [Baba Palangposh] would rise from hisplace and approach them graciously, and inquire: 'What areyou discussing?' And they would submit their preoccupa-tion, and Hazrat [Palangposh] would say two or three wordswhich would pacify them all, and they would agree.69

These were clearly inclusive sites of public deliberation andtheir emergence in the late seventeenth and early eighteenthcentury attests to the plurality of the public sphere. In theirproliferation we see a gradual relocation of the sites of culturalproduction, following the persistent, if low-profile and anony-mous, struggle of subordinate social groups to defend their rightto interpret, modify and change the normative environment.The public sphere in the precolonial period should be imaginedas a cultural space in which multiple and contrastive publicscame together, collided, colluded or collapsed. When the British

68 George Forster, A Journey from Bengal to England through the Northern Part ofIndia, Kasbmire, Afghanistan and Persia and into Russia by Caspian Sea (New Delhi,1997 [reprint]), Vol. I, p. 242.69 Baba Shah Mahmud, Malfuzat-i Naqshbandia, p. 74.

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established their rule in India, therefore, one of the problemsthey were confronted with was to manage and control this (pre-existing) pluralistic public sphere. It was through techniques ofenumeration, classification and hierarchisation that they soughtto deal with this problem, but with little success. India remained'a land of million mutinies'.70

70 This is the title of a book by V.S. Naipaul. I must, however, clarify that eventhough I found the title interesting, Naipaul's views about India and other Asiancivilisations appear to me to be quite idiosyncratic and obnoxious.